Summary: In Episode 14 of the Together London Podcast, I talk to Nishant Kothary about using soft skills to make things happen, how our brains deceive us, and why understanding other people is crucial for our success. Check out Nishant’s website, his upcoming Dare Conference talk, and follow him on twitter @rainypixels. Listen to the podcast Download MP3 file or subscribe in iTunes. Read the transcript Jonathan Kahn: I'm speaking to Nishant Kothary. He's joining me today from Seattle. He's worked for Microsoft and Amazon. He now works on his own startup, and he has multidisciplinary web skills. He's going to be joining us at the Dare Conference in September, which we're really excited about. Nishant, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Nishant Kothary: Thanks for having me. Jonathan: As I was just saying, you've worked at big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and now you're working with your wife, Pita, on a startup. My first question is how did working at Amazon and Microsoft shape your approach and your outlook? Nishant: That's a good place to start. I like to say my approach and outlook were shaped under duress, but I think of that in a very positive way. Working at a corporation is never easy, particularly for someone who's a heavy introvert like myself. I test as an extreme extrovert on Myers-Briggs, so go figure. [laughter] Nishant: You have to understand people, their conscious, but more importantly, their unconscious motives and behaviors to work in a corporation. That doesn't come naturally to someone who's more at ease with Lego, a guitar, a book, a computer, or a dog. [laughs] I really had to stretch myself at both companies to operate mostly out of my comfort zone. At Amazon, for instance, I was a program manager on Instant Video. It was called something else back then. Then I did a short stint on Kindle. The program manager is the guy who's in charge, but he has no part of the software design or development team reporting to him. You have all of the influence and none of the authority. But if the product doesn't ship on time, and the right thing doesn't ship, it's my butt on the line. At Microsoft, I wore several hats, from being a web strategist or an evangelist to driving keynote addresses. What all of those things had in common was that they relied on my ability to influence people without having any authority over them. Oddly enough, Microsoft and Amazon, which are both large corporations, and you generally don't credit large corporations with giving you these kinds of skills, gave me my "people skills." What I didn't realize, oddly enough, in the process of learning...How do I put it? What I didn't realize back then was, in the process of learning about how people and about how I think and act, I would become a better designer. That's always a work in progress. But if Pita and I succeed at building something meaningful and hopefully profitable, I'll owe a large part of it to Microsoft and Amazon because they inadvertently put a gun to my head and then pushed me out of my comfort zone. That's what really helped. Jonathan: That's so interesting because you're saying that someone like Microsoft, which people might assume is like a command and control-type culture -- someone who has never worked in a big company, for example, me -- I might assume that everyone there is kind of military, and, if you've got a job title, then people just do what you say. Yet you're telling me that you have to convince people to do things without having any actual, official power to do stuff. How is that the case? Nishant: More so than Microsoft, let me use Amazon as an example. Amazon, when I worked there, probably had 12,000 people. Microsoft, when I worked there, was about 75 to 80,000 people worldwide. That's huge. It just blows away Dunbar's number. Jonathan: It's a number you can't imagine…
